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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

    Score5.9 out of 10
    N/AEnterprise Architect is the flagship architecture management platform from global, Australian-headquartered company Sparx Systems.

    $229

    per license

    Visual Studio

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AVisual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.

    $45

    per month

    Pricing
    Sparx Systems Enterprise ArchitectVisual Studio
    Editions & Modules
    Professional
    $229
    per license
    Corporate
    $299
    per license
    Unified
    $499
    per license
    Ultimate
    $699
    per license
    Professional
    $45.00
    per month
    Enterprise
    $250.00
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Sparx Systems Enterprise ArchitectVisual Studio
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Sparx Systems Enterprise ArchitectVisual Studio
    Considered Both Products
    Sparx Systems
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    40 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    41 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    32 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    36 Answers
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    Sparx Systems Enterprise ArchitectVisual Studio
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    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Sparx Systems Enterprise ArchitectVisual Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    9.1
    (118 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.2
    (15 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    8.8
    (15 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Sparx Systems Enterprise ArchitectVisual Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Sparx Systems
    Enterprise Architect can be used to capture business requirements, design and management of all successive models, algorithms, process flows/workflows, design of business data objects and other artifacts. The strong point is the ability to link the items in all models with each other, the more time the analysts and designers "invest" into making nice and clearly defined models, the higher the future pay-off by any successive changes to the systems. Enterprise Architect is not a good tool for capturing rather unstructured business requirements, use e.g. Confluence or other solutions instead. EA should comprise the extracted models with very little unstructured information. Management of the changes process should not be done in Enterprise Architect, rather use JIRA/Confluence or similar.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    When working with base C# code for desktop and web projects, then Microsoft Visual Studio is ideal as it provides the libraries and interfaces needed to quickly create, test and deploy solutions. It is when slightly more complex scenarios are required that issues can arise. The built-in integration for things like PowerBI Paginated Reports and dashboards is far from ideal.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Sparx Systems
    • Open Architecture - A wide and extensive set of options, plug-ins and customization options make Sparx EA more of a tool kit than just a tool. Most tools allow customization but Sparx EA is built from the ground up with this in mind.
    • Wide variety of formats, lexicons, standards and data import export capabilities allow different roles to interact with the information in different ways.
    • Automated report generation allows architects and designers to spend less taking on word processing and more time on performing architecture and design.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • I like how the tabs and panels are organized; everything is gathered together so you can find what you're looking for quickly.
    • If you can't find something, there's a thorough search engine that searches all of Visual Studio's features.
    • The Team Foundation Server feature is fantastic since it allows us to easily deploy and roll back changes on the server.
    Read full review
    Cons
    Sparx Systems
    • Needs someone that is very conversant with business modelling terminology
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
    • The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
    • Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Sparx Systems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Sparx Systems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    I love the overall usability of Microsoft Visual Studio. I’ve been using this IDE for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen it evolve by leaps and bounds. Today, with AI and code-suggestion/completion features, developers no longer need to remember countless libraries, methods, or language syntax, or invest a huge amount of programming effort to complete a project. It truly offers everything a developer needs to program, debug, test, and deploy in a single IDE.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Sparx Systems
    The support team of Sparx EA, based in Australia, is always willing to help and give direction.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    There are many resources available supporting Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft whitepapers, forum posts, and online Visual Studio documentation. There are countless demonstration videos available, as well. If users are having issues, they can call Microsoft Support, but depending on the company's agreement with Microsoft, the number of included support calls will vary from organization to organization. I've found that Microsoft support calls can be hit or miss depending on who you get, but they can usually get you with the right support person for your issue.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Sparx Systems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    IT is very complicated to understand all the functions that the environment has if you are not familiar with this type of development environments. It is important to select a good in-person training to achieve to understand all the possibilities and the capacity of the application. In this case, you will be able to develop a lot type of different applications.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Sparx Systems
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    If you are not accustomed to develop in this type of development environments it would be complicated to follow all the parts of the course because if the course does not include a great tour with all the concepts to develop you will not have the option to understand all the functions.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Sparx Systems
    BiZZdesign represents a different new concept to enterprise architecture, its gravity center is not technical modelling, but rather a view on capturing the whole end-user experience or customer journey. It also allows to grasp areas as internal company capabilities, required for adoption/changes and operation of the solution, uses the same Archimate modelling language. This solution is in my opinion a new generation enabling to not only design the solutions, but also manage the whole application portfolio with respect to capabilities and requirement parameters.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.
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    Return on Investment
    Sparx Systems
    • This program speed up the development process. It generates the actual code with my model classes after modeling
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • Using the integration between Visual Studio and our source control service, the cost of re-work and losing code is drastically reduced.
    • Paid versions of Visual Studio enable developers to be so much more productive than hacked-together open source solutions that it's hard to imagine developing in Windows without it.
    • When combined with support subscriptions and the vast array of free online help options available, Visual Studio saves our developers time by keeping them coding and testing, not wasting their time trying to guess their way out of problems or spend endless hours online hoping to find answers.
    Incentivized
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